Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The real use of money is to buy freedom

paraschopra.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 303 posts

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#181

Post by kbolino »

coldtea wrote: post #167
benched wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This trope is so tired. Yes, I live better than a medieval peasant, and I have access to more computing power than ever. Yet, the standard of living across my entire family and most people I know is blatantly lower, in terms of human basics like housing and togetherness, than in my grandparents time, despite the fact that my grandparents were factory workers without even high school educations, and I am an experience…

I think we are in agreement! I only gave the example to say that what's basic is relative (compared to current standards), so saying that a trailer-park person has more access to more things than a peasant doesn't mean anything.

If living better than a medieval peasant doesn't mean anything, then why do so few people want to live like medieval peasants?

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#182

Post by akgerber »

flyinglizard wrote: post #123
calibraxis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true; there's a reason why we have police, military and (in the US) the world's biggest imprisonment rate. Let's reframe. Our economic system is capitalism. That means I can exclusively control (via state force) a region's natural resources (a "property" relation between me and everyone else in the universe). It also means that most people try to rent themselves out, giving themselves up to someone's command for…

Among Forbes top 20 billionaires, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who's made his fortune from natural resources. A person who seeks value from society - value originating at the work of others - has to provide such value back. If all you can do is simple manual labor, you will need to provide quite a lot of it to purchase scarce items that have a high degree of inherent value (such as an iPhone).

The Kochs' money is mostly from natural resource extraction. Most software businesses are pretty heavily premised on intellectual property rights.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#183

Post by wpietri »

flyinglizard wrote: post #93
nexttimer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real use of money is to buy freedom The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else. Inequality (wealth-based) means nothing else than domination. If you are richer, then you dominate the poorer people. And richer countries dominate poorer countries. This is the most basic and fundamental injustice [0] we seem to accept in our Western culture. Because we…

I think that's a simplistic view. Most rich people became rich because they provided a particular value to society. This value is exchanged for money, which allows the rich to draw back this value as they see fit. Lets imagine that Steve Jobs, instead of getting paid for his iPhones, sold them in exchange for a person's time. The average hourly wage in USA is approximately $24, meaning an iPhone would retail for abou…

> Most rich people became rich because they provided a particular value to society.

Evidence? I think quite a lot of rich people are rich not because of an ability to create value, but an ability to extract cash. E.g., 95% of Wall Street's activity. And even those in the value-creating category often attribute much of their wealth to right-place, right-time luck rather than an unusually high ability to create value.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#184

Post by strlen »

nexttimer wrote: post #80
miles wrote: post #21

Tim O'Reilly on money: It’s easy to get caught up in the heady buzz of making money. You should regard money as fuel for what you really want to do, not as a goal in and of itself. Money is like gas in the car — you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road — but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations! Source: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters-...

> The real use of money is to buy freedom The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else. Inequality (wealth-based) means nothing else than domination. If you are richer, then you dominate the poorer people. And richer countries dominate poorer countries. This is the most basic and fundamental injustice [0] we seem to accept in our Western culture. Because we…

> The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else.

There are three wrong assumptions here: 1) that wealth is zero-sum 2) that wealth is the only possible way to obtain freedom 3) that for each individual the same quantum of wealth buys the exact same quantum of freedom.

Prime-facie, neither of these three are true.

There are all kinds of problems with associated with inequality (and the literature is far too rich for me to go into detail here), but this isn't one of them.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#185

Post by xrange »

benched wrote: post #162
coldtea wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created. And it very much is. > It's hard to reconcile that view with the fact that standards-of-living have been growing, more or less worldwide, for the two centuries. Those are not personal wealth. Increased standards of living are a kind of background element, as they are more or less shared by the population. Statistically they eve…

This trope is so tired. Yes, I live better than a medieval peasant, and I have access to more computing power than ever. Yet, the standard of living across my entire family and most people I know is blatantly lower, in terms of human basics like housing and togetherness, than in my grandparents time, despite the fact that my grandparents were factory workers without even high school educations, and I am an experience…

Can we ask where you live? I wonder how local real-estate prices effect things. For example, I live in fly-over county in a $115,000, 1400 sq. ft. house on a large lot, while my brother-in-law lives in an 800 sq, ft. house on a tiny lot in Seattle that is apparently worth more than $400,000. I support my wife and 4 kids on one income, while he and his wife both work to support their two kids. So even though I make considerably less money, we have a lifestyle that is on par with the 1950's ideal.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#186

Post by gress »

akgerber wrote: post #176
malandrew wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in among the lower middle class lifestyles, you'd have exactly the same minus the "relatively large house". However, if you go back 50 years earlier, the lower class lifestyle was not that different from the favella living in slums around the world, where entire families lived in one or two rooms and everyone in the family who was able was responsible for contributing to making ends meet.

The lower middle classes can't afford a house/apartment in places with laws that make it difficult to build new houses or apartments, including many places with lots of tech jobs. But in rural areas, or many Midwestern cities, or much of the Sunbelt, a house is still very much within reach. But many of the most productive regions of the country are zoned such that very little new housing is built, and rising incomes…

Of course houses are cheap in places with no jobs.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#187

Post by bmelton »

gress wrote: post #171
malandrew wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in among the lower middle class lifestyles, you'd have exactly the same minus the "relatively large house". However, if you go back 50 years earlier, the lower class lifestyle was not that different from the favella living in slums around the world, where entire families lived in one or two rooms and everyone in the family who was able was responsible for contributing to making ends meet.

The lower middle classes can't own any house at all with just one wage earner. Your second point (which I agree with) seems to imply that the US standard of living peaked in the 50's

> The lower middle classes can't own any house at all with just one wage earner.

The lower bound on lower middle class is, according to Wikipedia, $32,500. There are plenty of houses available for purchase in the $60,000 range, which is well inside of affordability ranges.

There are a plethora of rural homes available within those ranges, but that level of income isn't necessarily exclusionary to city dwelling either. Dallas, San Antonio, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Tampa, etc., are all very affordable, and at least according to MSN[1], has homes available for less than the lower bound on lower middle class.

[1] - http://realestate.msn.com/what-you-must-earn-to-buy-a-home-i...

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#188

Post by sliverstorm »

birken wrote: post #5

There is a really great article in The Atlantic (from 2011) called "Secret Fears of the Super-Rich" on this topic: Excerpt: The respondents turn out to be a generally dissatisfied lot, whose money has contributed to deep anxieties involving love, work, and family. Indeed, they are frequently dissatisfied even with their sizable fortunes. Most of them still do not consider themselves financially secure; for that, they…

No surprise there; would the folks who are satisfied with what they have, bother to become super-rich?

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#189

Post by gress »

bmelton wrote: post #180
gress wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 1950's upper middle class lifestyle involved owning a relatively large house, and sane working hours with in many cases only one wage earner. It's simply false that you can live this way today on the same dollar amount.

Well, definitions have changed, completely. The average home size in 1950 was ~1000 square feet, while the average home size in 2004 is ~2400 square feet. Similarly, the 'sane working hours' you mention, generally speaking, were 48 hours a week or more. In the 'upper' middle class, more hours were spent at the office as well. Today, the average worker works ~37 hours. Assuming job accessibility (which I have no idea…

I think you're actually proving my point - a second car isn't an indicator of marvelous bounty. It's a liability required to support a necessary second job and higher debt load.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#190

Post by gress »

bmelton wrote: post #187
gress wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lower middle classes can't own any house at all with just one wage earner. Your second point (which I agree with) seems to imply that the US standard of living peaked in the 50's

> The lower middle classes can't own any house at all with just one wage earner. The lower bound on lower middle class is, according to Wikipedia, $32,500. There are plenty of houses available for purchase in the $60,000 range, which is well inside of affordability ranges. There are a plethora of rural homes available within those ranges, but that level of income isn't necessarily exclusionary to city dwelling either…

Are there plenty of jobs near those cheap houses?
Post reply on HN